How to Fall Out of Love - Debora Phillips

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

To my patients and friends, whose problems in being human have led me to seek solutions. — Theodore Roethke

CONTENTS the strength to fill the missing gaps. And how to reward yourself for your progress. 5 Jealousy 83 How to overcome jealousy and feelings of rejection. How to achieve deep relaxation. 6 Repulsion 113 A drastic but easily practiced technique that can, when necessary, be useful in reinforcing thought-stopping and silent ridicule. Particularly useful in breaking the links of physical attraction. Part Two •.. And in Again 7 Intimacy 125 How to overcome social awkwardness now that you are on your own again. The warmth and joy of intimacy. Specific skills. 8 Orgasmic Reconditioning 147 How to transfer sexual feelings from your old partner to a new person. 9 Sexuality — A New Beginning 167 How to improve your orgasm. How to increase your sensitivity to your partner. How to increase your pleasure and intensify your arousal. 10 In Love 182 Foreword and Acknotvledgments It's ironic that our great source of joy, love, could cause such pain. Now that half the marriages in the United States will end in divorce

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and now that casual affairs are common, there seems to be an almost parallel rise in suffering. Perhaps as choices increase and rigid behavior codes decline, anxiety rises. Perhaps people are simply more open about their pain. But whatever the reason, every time I mention that I have a program called "Falling Out of Love," I am swamped with letters and phone calls and personal visits from people who have seen the order of their lives made chaotic, who experience emotional devastation and trauma, and who desperately need help. Hence this book. It is a painstaking reproduction of an extraordinary successful behavior therapy program. And it is for the millions of people who are suffering and have no idea how to deal with that suffering other than vaguely trying to suppress what they feel: love for someone who does not love them, or love for someone in a relationship that gives them only pain. How to Fall Out of Love is a sincere effort to make therapy practical, concrete, accessible, brief and durable. The point is to stop the pain caused by obsessive thinking about someone who does not or cannot love you. And to give you the skills to build a new relationship. In many important ways, How to Fall Out of Love is the result of some fifty years of countless scientific observations on the learning process by scientists from Pavlov to Wolpe. So I want first to acknowledge my debt to a very substantial body of knowledge, called behavior therapy, which has been gained through an extraordinary expenditure of time and effort in the laboratory and in clinical therapeutic practice. Moreover, and more important, this is in many ways Joseph Wolpe's book. (At least the best of it is. Its shortcomings and inaccuracies are my own.) As the father and founder of behavior therapy, he has made a substantial contribution to healing the pain of human suffering. As

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my teacher, he has led me to enormous possibilities. And I want to thank both Joe and Stella Wolpe for their constant personal support and for many specific contributions to the manuscript And Fd like to thank David Wolpe for suggesting the terms "graduated calming" and "silent ridicule.*' Those who know the Reverend Doctor William Kirby as Bill will recognize many of his ideas and concepts throughout the book. And I want to add my recognition, gratitude and appreciation for his personal support and guidance, and for teaching me so much. I want to thank Jean Firstenberg and Paul Firstenberg for their love and support and treasured advice, and for helping me realize the potential in my work. And thank you also to: Professor Nancy Weiss, whose excellent suggestions and sensitivity at many stages of the manuscript had a profound influence on the finished book. Dr. Michael Ascher, who helped me develop silent ridicule. Carol Thompson, for her wisdom, sanity, judgment, humor and a prodigious amount of hard work and sound advide. Marie Luisi, for backstage wisdom and up-front kindness, and for introducing me to Bob Judd. William Phillips, for support and for patience and help with the manuscript. Maxwell Anderson

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said Bill could be a writer instead of a scientist. He is a wise and loving man in either case. Bob Judd, for making this book possible; for his enthusiastic understanding of behavior therapy; for his tireless patience; for translating awkward clinical language into eloquent and accessible prose. And for never asking me to compromise in order to popularize. David Harris, a gentle editor with a razor mind, who pruned the awkward constructions, gave the book shape and form and freely gave us help from the start. Special acknowledgment goes to Teresa Holeman and Aurelia Boiling, who make my work possible. Debora Phillips Introduction How to Fall Out of Love is based on behavior therapy. Behavior therapy, a modern psychotherapy grounded in scientific knowledge about learning, proceeds from the basic assumption that nearly all human behavior is learned. Relearning through methods developed by behavior therapists can enable people to change behavior that causes them pain. Behavior therapy applies experimentally established principles of learning to change unadap-tive behavior. Unadaptive behavior includes unadaptxve feelings like jealousy, fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, fear of authority figures; as well as functional problems like overeating or sexual problems. Behavior therapy weakens behavior that causes you anxiety or hinders your ability to function comfortably in your own environment;

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it strengthens behavior that helps you pursue the life you want to live. Emotional problems can be cured—not merely controlled, or coped with, or understood, but fundamentally removed. ^Because emotional behavior is learned at a primitive (subcortical) level of neural organization, changing it must involve the same primitive level. No matter how clearly you may see that a particular emotional behavior is unhelpful to you, rational insight alone will not equip you to behave in a different fashion. Emotional habits are resistant to logical arguments or good advice, because something that is learned emotionally cannot be dealt with purely at an intellectual level. Anxiety is the central component of much una-daptive behavior. Anxiety itself is learned behavior. As a result of certain past experiences, an individual forms the habit of reacting automatically with anxiety or fear to certain situations. In some circumstances the fear is appropriate because real danger is involved. In cases where no real danger exists, the fear or anxiety is inappropriate (a fear of heights while looking out of a window would be an inappropriate fear). For some people such anxiety—whether fear of flying, fear of heights, fear of rejection, fear of what others think, fear of taking risks, fear of criticism, fear of intimacy, or a whole range of sexual fears—-can become so debilitating that it seriously interferes with daily life. Anxiety reduction is central to behavior therapy. The elimination of anxiety is most easily accomplished by inhibiting the anxiety with a competing response. If a therapist can evoke a response (for example, deep relaxation) in the presence of a stimulus that provokes anxiety (for example, criticism from your father), the bond between the old stimulus and the anxiety it caused (for example, fear of criticism) will be weakened. Eliniinating or significantly reducing the anxiety

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removes the impediments to creative and comfortable functioning in daily living. This book illustrates the way behavior therapy deals with certain complex spectra of human responses—emotional involvements that have outlived their appropriateness. People who are depressed or oppressed by obsessive thinking about another person will learn how to use competing thoughts to break their repetitive chains of thought People who are habitually dominated by others will learn how to overcome feelings of helplessness by learning to be assertive. People who are consumed with jealousy will learn how to vanquish the green-eyed monster. Those who have difficulty socially, or need to develop skills of intimacy, will find help and guidance. However, the primary function of this book is to stop the pain of not being loved, and to help people build new relationships when old ones have broken down. It has all the virtues of behavior therapy: brevity, action, a systematic, step-by-step program to reach specific goals. It demonstrates one of the great strengths of behavior therapy—dealing with large, complex emotional difficulties in manageable component parts. Moreover, its clarity, warmth, and understanding make the techniques of behavior therapy both accessible and useful to the general reader. Joseph Wolpe, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania PART ONE How to Fall Out of Love . The First Step There are millions of people who are in love and in pain because their love is not returned. Chances are, several people you know are going through the painful process of falling out of love.

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Suddenly, without warning, a young husband leaves his wife to live with another woman. A graduate student is deserted by his fiancee just before their wedding. An elderly woman's husband dies. A secretary is in love with her boss who strings her along. A waitress is having an affair with a teacher but doesn't want to damage her marriage. A schoolboy has an obsessive longing for his dead father. A young woman banker falls in love with a client who cannot return her love. A nurse is in love with an alcoholic. A businessman's fiancee is a chronic liar. A love affair ends for the photographer but not for the model, Our whole culture is geared and meshed to help us fall in love, but nowhere are there signs to point the way out Falling out of love is usually a natural, although painful, process. Most people can and do fall out of love without help. Time heals, they meet other people and their lives go on. On the other hand, for some of us the loss of a love can be almost overwhelming—an obsession, an intense, enduring, immobilizing pain. Being in love when ifs not returned can lead to depression, obsessive thoughts, sexual dysfunction, inability to work, difficulty in making friends, and self-destructiveness. For all sorts of reasons, some of us hold fast to the memory of love as if it were the real thing. Love's so precious (real love, false love or any kind of love) that we fear to let go t afraid of the great void that comes in the aftermath, the loneliness, the feelings of rejection and the anguish. People who come to my office for help are in love and in pain. I'm a behavior therapist and what I do is help stop the pain so you can escape from a nonproductive dreamworld of unreturned love. So you can love again, and be loved.

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■I first began developing this particular program three years ago in response to a young woman whose partner had suddenly left without warning or explanation. Marjorie, twenty-four-year-old graduate student. She had been living for two years with a male graduate student. Both planned to be field anthropologists after graduation. They shared courses, friends and vacations and they planned to be married shortly after graduation. The day of graduation, Marjorie's fiance* left (for his parents' home in Nebraska, it was later learned) without a word of explanation. The more she thought about what had happened and why, the more she became obsessed and depressed. After two weeks she couldn't bring herself to apply for grants or for a university job. She felt isolated, she felt she was to blame, and she felt so depressed she seldom left her room. Marjorie was highly skeptical of therapy, but she was also becoming increasingly anxious about what was happening to her life, so, at the urging of a friend, she agreed to see me. I designed a plan of action for her. The first step was thought-stopping to reduce the excessive amount of time she spent thinking about him. Next she practiced silent ridicule to put him in a more realistic and less perfect light. And finally she embarked on a program of positive image building to repair the damage that had been done to her own self-image and to realize her own importance and value. Marjorie's thoughts of her former lover dropped from approximately sixty-five per day in the first week to two to four per day at the end of the second week. In the third week she began applying for grants for field work at an anthropological site in Mexico. She stopped therapy at the end of the third week.

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Follow-up: Marjorie accepted a grant for field work in Iran, is not married (does not want to be, she says), and describes herself as being in "great shape." Marjorie's rapid response was by no means unusual, as numbers of other people who successfully went through the program were later to prove. Young, old, men, women, gay, straight . . . they were all, in some ways, immobilized by the pain. Many of them had a healthy skepticism in regard to therapy in general and to a systematic program in particular. I say healthy skepticism because some therapy can take years and still produce little in the way of results. And any preset program might seem too rigid, generalized, cold and mechanical to deal with your own complex, unique and private feelings of love. And yet, there are advantages to a systematic program, important advantages. It really does help to observe and organize your feelings. It helps because once you observe your feelings, you objectify them, gain perspective and therefore begin to change them. It also helps to have a step-by-step program of positive things to do rather than struggle with a tide of amorphous, overwhelming feelings. And it helps to have specific goals so you can measure your progress. The program in this book is behavior therapy. Thaf is, it is based on what neurologists, behavior-ists and other scientists have found out in the laboratory about the way we learn. So it's not a pep talk for following moral guidelines or achieving more insights; it is a straightforward positive program based on observed facts. I developed the program at Temple University Medical School (where I am on the faculty) and at Princeton University. Thus far, it has been enormously successful. By that I mean that those who have gone through the program to date have fallen out of love in the sense that they no longer constantly think

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about the person they formerly loved, no longer feel great pain and longing when they do thjnk of that person, and are able to build new relationships with new people. Some of the techniques and exercises may seem drastic to you at first glance. So I should emphasize that no matter how strong the technique may seem, you won't end up feeling anger or hostility or hatred toward the person you want to fall out of love with. I am not attempting to shift your feelings to the opposite of love. I am aiming at the great middle ground of indifference. What I would like to do first is give you an overview of the program and explain a little about how it works. First and foremost, falling in love is not a rational process. Ifs not planned or reasoned. There are countless definitions of what love is. And certainly the experience of a teen-ager whose sweetheart has moved away is different in many ways from the widower whose wife of forty years has just died. But however you define love, I believe that if you feel you are in love, you are. Love is simply too individual and subjective to fit into any simple or objective definition. Falling in love is an intense emotional and intuitive experience. A lot of it is magic and chemistry. Because falling in love is emotionally learned, it has to be emotionally unlearned if you are going to fall out of love. That is why insights, rational thinking and exploring the reasons you fell in love are all inefficient and ineffective. The whys of your love can be intriguing. But it is unlikely that knowing them will* help you stop the pain of being in love with someone who does not love you. The first, most important thing that you should do is ask yourself if you want to stop the pain. And the way you stop that pain is not by talking about it'or by looking for insights or finding insights. It is by dealing with that pain in a direct, systematic way.

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What you feel about someone is largely in response to that person—complex responses to the things they've done and said, to the way they look and feel, to the things you have done and said. These are learned responses. You didn't feel them about that person before you knew what that person looked and felt like, before you'd talked and done things together. Over a period of time those responses become deeply ingrained among the patterns of your mind. Constantly thinking about that person, constantly repeating fixed images of him or her can reinforce those images and make them stronger and more persistent The love you feel for that person is learned on many levels. That fact—that the love you feel for that person is something you have learned to feel for that person—is tremendously important. Because if you learned to love, you can unlearn that love. If you can learn to unlearn, what freedom! You won't have to spend years struggling in the backwash of an old love affair or, for example, the death of a wife. You won't have to rely on illuminating the whys and wherefores of your life with insight If love is learned and if you can unlearn to love someone because you want to stop the pain, you won't have to rely on wishful thinking ("if only, if only, if only**), the advice of friends or outsiders, or the random chance of inspiration or insight, or the slow passage of time. You can do it yourself—now. Lef s start with a survey of the contents of How to Fall Out of Love. It begins with thought-stopping, a technique developed by the father of behavior therapy, Dr. Joseph Wolpe, a professor of psychiatry at Temple University School of Medicine.

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Thought-stopping was one of the early innovations of behavior therapy and it remains one of the most powerful. In many ways it is the foundation for the chapters that follow. Thought-stopping takes you that first essential step away from being in love; that is, it reduces the time you spend thinking about that person, and leaves you more time for yourself and other people. Thought-stopping itself is a reasonably simple exercise, but it has all the hallmarks of behavior therapy: a specific goal, the suppression of one response by a competing response, action, brevity, a means for measuring progress, simplicity and a functional practicality. Which is to say, it works. The second step, silent ridicule, is designed to make falling out of love easier. Thought-stopping reduces the frequency of your thoughts of the person you love; next, silent ridicule, a new technique that was developed by Dr. Michael Ascher (Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University Medical School) and me, reduces the intensity of those thoughts. It seems that one of our most human traits is to idealize someone who can't or won't return our love. Silent ridicule uses humor to erode that pedestal you've so kindly built for the person you love. It is also an especially useful technique if you find you have to see that person from time to time. After you've reduced the frequency and intensity of thoughts of that person, you can turn your attention to yourself. You are especially vulnerable now, and depression and doubt make poor companions. Your own self-view can realistically improve with a little perspective, so another chapter presents a series of positive exercises (more unlearning) to help develop your strength to stand alone if you need to, along with the courage to meet other people and build bridges to new relationships.

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The point is that each chapter takes you further from your former love. And it also takes you closer to more meaningful, rewarding relationships with others. So you can go as far or as short a distance as you like. The program continues through desen-sitization (as created by Dr. Wolpe) for dealing with jealousy and rejection; covert sensitization, which I call repulsion, developed by Dr. Joseph Cautela (behavior therapist, Boston College); orgasmic reconditioning, developed by Dr. John Marquis (psychologist in Palo Alto, California); positive reinforcement as developed by Dr. B. F. Skinner (psychologist, Harvard University); and many useful skills for developing warmth and intimacy with a new person. So instead of struggling with the shadows of your past or trying to decide who's to blame or why this or that happened, or even why you feel the way you do, each chapter is a step away from an old relationship as well as a positive step toward developing new ones. Thought'Stopping Most people who are in love with someone but are not loved in return find it difficult to stop loving that person. But chances are they, or you, would like to think about that person less. What you have to do is unlearn some of those things you've learned to think and feel about that person. All your life you have been learning. From the time you were born until now, you have been learning emotionally, intellectually and physically. It would take months or years to remember and evaluate all the things you've learned to feel about, say, your mother and your father, not to mention your teachers and friends and all the other important people in your life. So lefs ignore everyone else for

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now and concentrate on just one person—the person you love. Stop. Stop thinking about that person. Chances are you've already said to yourself that you have to stop thinking about the person you love. You may even have told yourself that hundreds of times. It doesn't" work, does it? If s also irritating to have friends tell you to stop thinking about that person. ("She's not worth it." "You should know better." "Cheer up," and so on.) The mind seems almost too contrary to do what if s told, as if it had a mind of its own. For example, if I told you not to think of Attila the Hun for the next sixty seconds ... in the next sixty seconds you're probably going to find at least one Hun on horseback riding through your thoughts. Chasing Attila the Hun out of your thoughts is easy compared to getting the person you love out of the kingdom of your mind. Because there are so many sweet, delicious things to think about. So many conversations left unfinished. So many private, tender things. If s hard to stop thinking those thoughts. They are specific, repetitive and often very, very forceful. But they can be stopped through a systematic behavioral program. You can train a thought to stay away. You can starve a thought. Allowing a thought to come back time and again is to feed it, reinforce it, make it grow stronger, and, in some cases, more painful. Thought patterns about someone you love can become so strong that making up your mind to stop thinking about them often isn't enough. You need to actively, systematically inhibit those thoughts. And you need new thoughts to put in place of them.

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Make a list. Make a list of the best, most positive scenes and pleasures you can think of that do not involve that person. The point is that everything you have learned, including your emotional responses to that person, has a neurological center. On a very basic level, many neurons in your nervous system have a double link. One link excites an action or emotion. Another link inhibits other actions or emotions. In physical terms, for example, the neurons that order your thigh to tighten also, at the same time, inhibit the muscles at the back of your leg from tightening. It has been hypothesized and proven that this double link of action/inhibition also exists emotionally. Love inhibits hate. Laughter is inhibited by sadness, anger or anxiety. And laughter, in turn, can inhibit sadness, anger and anxiety. (While the neurological mechanics of our emotions are just now revealing themselves to neurologists, the phenomenon was noted as far back as 1673 by the philosopher Spinoza, who said in Ethics, "An emotion can only be controlled or destroyed by another emotion contrary thereto, and with more power for controlling emotion.") Therefore, make a list of scenes, places, events and/or feelings that are wholly pleasurable to you, but do not involve the person you need to stop thinking about. Your list is entirely your own. No one else need ever see it. And the act of writing down the list helps you to become involved with pleasure without being involved with your former love. It may be helpful to you to see some other lists, even though they may not be anything like your own. First, the list of a nineteen-year-old college student in love with an older woman who did not love him.

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Aaron, nineteen-year-old college student. Aaron said he was failing every subject, losing his friends and that he hated himself. He thought of Jane constantly, incessantly. They'd met because he was working for a contractor, building a garage behind her house. He saw her dressing one morning. And it became a movie in Aaron's mind that he could watch again and again: He is on the rafters of the garage on an early summer morning. The sun is warm, the curtains flutter in an open window and Jane tosses in her bed. She wears a simple white nightgown. She's thrown the covers back. She sits up, raises the nightgown over her shoulders and drops it to the floor. She walks across the room. She looks out the window, nude, sleepy and pleased that the sky is blue. She sees Aaron looking at her. She smiles. They met several times, had a few dates, made love a couple of times. But she wasn't really interested. Aaron, of course, had several other specific Jane movies in his mind ready at all times for instant replay. While Aaron didn't want to argue about or be told about what was good for her, or him, he did see and feel that he was in real pain. He could see that it was hurting his life. And he did agree to stop the pain by doing thought-stopping. Aaron's List 1. The sweet, fat crack of the bat as you hit a home run in the World Series. Cheers, rounding the bases, TV contracts. 2. Finding a cool freshwater stream running into a beach in Mendocino, California. 3. Sitting at the kitchen table when you were six and watching your mother make supper.

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4. Winning the Olympic marathon and going on, nonstop, to grab a pole, vault and set a new world record at twenty-one-feet even. (When you go over the top you can feel the sun shine on the soles of your bare feet.) 5. Sliding your hand inside the bikini of the innocent MJ. 6. Liberating the stockade in Khartoum. 7. Your first screen test at MGM. 8. Rescuing Linda from a mugger. Graciously receiving her gratitude. 9. MPs innocent hand sliding inside your pants. 10. Riding a moose into town. 11. Sailing out into the Pacific sunset on a three-masted, mahogany and teak schooner headed for Tahiti. Here's another list from a thirty-one-year-old woman who had been living with a man for four years, Laura, thirty-one-year-old writer. She had lived with a younger man for 1 four years. While she worried about being overweight, she was exceptionally bright, attractive, inventive and witty. He was unskilled, but she made enough money for both of them. She introduced him to her circle of friends and gave him the money and encouragement to set up a men's clothing store. Just as he was beginning to be successful, he left her to live with a woman he met at a parry. 1 just fell in love with her," he said. Laura was in real torture. Just when he had become strong enough to stand on his own two feet, he'd left her. Why? Was she ugly? Unlovable? Had she given him too much? But most of all she profoundly missed him. All their friends knew them both. She felt cut

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in half. Kept reaching over to touch him in bed when he wasn't there. And she hated his new lover with fury and would not tolerate anyone who would not revile her new rival. We did thought-stopping (her writer's imagination made lor a particularly rich, inventive list), silent ridicule (this was especially useful because she kept running into him at friends' houses or on the street or in restaurants), graduated calming (to deal with the jealousy she felt for the other woman), positive image building (so that she could know mat she was an extraordinarily attracitve woman), and finally, repulsion as a drastic but effective way of changing her view of him as the only possible man for her, ever. Follow-up: Laura took much longer than most people. After four weeks she was still thinking of her former lover four to eight times a day. However, repulsion (which would not have worked earlier) finally put an end to her obsessive thinking about her former lover. And after six weeks she was able to see him and have dinner with him. And while "relaxed? would be an exaggeration, she was able to deal with the situation, and felt strong because of her control. One month later she formed another loving relationship. Laura's List A large silver platter of shaved ice. On the ice, blue point oysters, littleneck clams, and in the center, In a large cut crystal bowl, fresh beluga caviar. There's more if you'd like. And cold Dom Perignon champagne to go with it 2. As a young girl on a summer morning riding her bicycle down a steep straight dirt road. The dirt road has little ripples on the surface and pebbles. The bike is going at tremendous speed. She takes her

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hands off the handlebars and skitters downhill with the sun in her face. 3. Peter Ustinov is her masseur. 4. Robert Redford is his assistant 5. Walking into an extravagant hotel, she is mistaken for a famous rock star. The drummer is insisting they sleep together now. Newspaper columnists want her advice. 6. Making love with a stranger on a hot afternoon in a farm field. 7. Riding on the back of a big motorcycle on a country road, with her arms around a man in a black leather jacket 8. Holding hands with Peter Nelson in secret during the junior high school assembly when she was thirteen. Feeling his hand on her knee. 9. What to do with a year's free pass on Pan Am. 10. Inheriting a farm on a small island in Greece. 11. Walking in a deep pine forest and finding a deer that is tame. Both Aaron and Laura's lists are unusually long. But they are useful here in showing you some of the variety of possibilities of pleasurable thoughts that do not involve your former love. The truth is, most people make a very short list, partly because they are depressed and thinking of pleasurable thoughts requires a lot of effort. And partly because they are so used to thinking about their lover that if s hard to imagine a happy scene without that person in it. Here are a few lists of a more typical length:

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Charles, thirty-four-year-old mechanic who was in love with a woman he'd met when she brought her car in for a tune-up. They were both married with children. Charles's List 1. Country-fried chicken, yams, home fries, and a big slice of pecan pie. 2. Watching the lead skater in the ice show skate in the nude. Tom, forty-eight-year-old science teacher whose wife had left him while they were on vacation in Yellowstone Park. Tom's List 1. Catching a twelve-pound bass. 2. Finding a completely original, cobalt blue, tall Lincoln drape Aladdin kerosene lamp, still in its original box, for sale for five dollars in a junk store. 3. Swimming naked in the sea. Melissa, a thirty-three-year-old librarian whose husband had died in a car crash. Melissa's Lisj 1. Watching the sun come up on a spring morning in the desert when the desert flowers are blooming. 2. Finishing a handmade mahogany chest she was making. Seeing the deep red glow of the wood. The sharp, thin, new smell of the varnish.

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Granger, twenty-six-year-old market researcher who wanted to stop being in love with a married woman. Granger's List 1. Telling his boss to shove it in great detail Another person liked to think of having lunch at a special Northern Italian restaurant Another man liked to think of making love with different men under a waterfall in Yosemite National Park. Another man liked to think of vanilla ice cream. The point is that your own list is your own. You may want to use a scene or two from the above lists, or you may well prefer scenes of your own. It doesn't have to be a funny list or a sexy one or a serious one, or even a long list It doesn't have to be anything .. . only yours. You can be as outrageous or as plain as you like, nobody's watching. It would be good if you'd write your list now. •. Now that you have your list, purposely bring on a throught of the person you want to fall out of love with. The first microsecond that thought enters your mind, yell "STOF* as loudly as you can. (Don't allow the thought to develop. Don't allow the thought of that person to go on beyond the first glimmer of that thought.) And then, in the next instant bring on one of the best thoughts from your list And whenever you happen spontaneously to think of that person, stop that thought by yelling "STOP** so that the thought cannot form in your mind. And then, instantly replace that thought with a thought from your list. That, in a nutshell, is thought-stopping—actively inhibiting thoughts you want to go away. The goal is to reduce the time you spend thinking about that person. But thought-stopping is also an important exercise

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for another reason. It gives you more control so that you're not at the mercy of random thoughts and feelings. Barbara, twenty-seven-year-old editor. She had been profoundly in love for five years with another editor at the same publishing house. He was married, but he said it was a loveless marriage. Barbara often thought of the quiet afternoons they spent working on a book together, making love in the sun on a blanket while on a picnic in the woods. She saw him every day at work. Each year he would tell her that their affair was making him feel too guilty and had to stop. He would not speak to her, except out of professional necessity. After a month he would come back saying he could not live without her. In Che fifth year of their relationship, after he'd said they were, once again, "through," she'd had an abortion. The trauma of the experience made her realize that she was in a dead-end relationship. She decided that she did want a family and home of her own. However, she was deeply in love with him. She had come to hate going to work, found it difficult to leave her apartment on weekends, found she was moody, shorttempered with other people, and found that she was constantly thinking of the sensual afternoons they'd had together. We began thought-stopping. She shut out thoughts of their lovemaking ("My hand prowling through the fur on his chest") and their intellectual discussions (*T wonder what he thinks of Randolph's new book?") with thoughts of the beautiful tropical fish in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sri Lanka, making love with the UN ambassador, and of rich foods forbidden by her diet In just two weeks of thought-stopping she found that she was thinking of him only two or three times a day on those days when she did not see him. She also did silent ridicule, positive image building, repulsion. After one month, she accepted his invitation to lunch. She felt some slight pangs of regret but also

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a very strong sense of strength and personal worth. She rejected his invitation to "begin all over again" and kept the conversation light and friendly. Shortly thereafter she stopped therapy. Follow-up: She still works at the same publishing house. And is now married to another man. Thought-stopping is a simple exercise, but it is all the more powerful for that There's an old myth that anything worthwhile can only be achieved through sacrifice and pain. I think we know better now. It does take time to do thought-stopping. But those thoughts of the person you love take your time too. They*re worse than robbers; they're muggers who leave you bruised and hurt And since you're so used to wallowing in them, it takes time and effort to weaken them. And thought-stopping does take practice. Love is our most powerful positive emotion. For centuries theologians have said that God is love. And Tolstoy in War and Peace wrote: "Love is God and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source." You can still hear the Beatles singing, "love, love, love, all you need is love," on the radio. And some 250 years ago, Isaac Watts wrote a fine hymn with the lines, "Love so amazing, so divine/Demands my soul, my life, my all." Fm mixing secular and holy love on purpose. There is so much love, so many kinds, so many qualities, that its beauty, force and power have dazzled writers and poets since the beginning of time. And no doubt as long as we have writers, poets or even two people left on earth, we shall hear more of love. Of course, you know all this. You know firsthand how powerful love is. Everyone this side of madness is "for" love. So unlearning the emotions and thoughts you have learned as a response to your former love is hard. Those thoughts have built up tremendous

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momentum over time. And the thoughts from your list are probably new and not yet really as strong. The difference in strength between thoughts of your former lover and thoughts from your list is a matter of conditioning, practice and time. So it is hard at first. You may feel foolish, self-conscious, uncertain, hesitant, too tired, or any of the other dubious things that people feel when they first shout "STOP." It's entirely possible the thought won't go away the first time you try. You have to be persistent and try again. One sixty-five-year-old woman in Ohio had to keep hammering at it, driving it out ten times before the thought of the man who had left her would go away the first day she tried thought-stopping. So don't expect it to be easy at first. If s simple, but not easy. However, as you practice it will become easier, and the thoughts of your former love will become weaker and less frequent until they stop coming in altogether. And the reason they will stop coming in altogether is threefold. First, when you keep a thought out you are unlearning—extinguishing that thought by refusing it the reinforcement of the repetition it needs for survival. Second, the pleasant replacement thought is a reward for stopping the thought And thus, it reinforces the habit of stopping those negative thoughts. On a basic neurological level, you learn to stop thinking about that person. So the more you do it, the easier it gets and the better it works. Third, you are using competing thoughts to break repetition chains—replacing images of your old love with new competing images. I strongly recommend that you keep a record of how many times a day you think of the person you love. Simply mark a card with the days of the week and place a tick beside the day each time you think of that person. It's an excellent way for you to measure your progress and to

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reinforce the thougftt-stopping process. Here, for example, is the card of a young man who was in love with another student who did not love him. 44 How to Fall Out of Lovb Wed. //////////J/////////*////////////// Thurs. Fri. /////////////// //////////// //////// ////// Sun. Moru Tues. Wed. Thurs. Fri. Sat. For all its effectiveness, thought-stopping is reversible. You don't have to worry about taking irreversible steps away from your former love. What you need to do now is stop the pain. And that means you have to think about that person much, much less. If you want to reverse the

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process, you can do so by "stopping" the thought-stopping, and thinking positive, warm, erotic, tender thoughts about the person again. Angelo, twenty-two. He quit his job rather than continue to see a woman at work who was no longer in love with him. There was no reasoning with Angelo. He did not care about reasons. Why should he? He was there. He knew her. He had several scenes ready to review at a moment's notice. "Remember the hot afternoon we had gone swimming in an icy cold pool in a roaring brook and she had..." As is so often the case, the details are all specific, real, sometimes exquisitely pleasurable and, as you know, they can add up to a pain that's crippling. Or numbing, at least We had done thought-stopping for six days when the woman saw Angelo at the supermarket and later called him and said she felt she had made a great mistake, and please could they meet and talk again. Angelo warily said yes, ceased thought-stopping and resumed the relationship. Later he said it was a little like falling in love all over again. Like any exercise, thought-stopping has to be repeated. Doing it on purpose ten times a day would be a minimum number apart from all the times you think of your former love spontaneously throughout the day. The first few days it does help to shout "STOP" out loud. So you need a quiet place of your own to practice. But after the first few days you can say "STOP" silently, or snap a rubber band thafs wrapped around your wrist. Or you may find it helpful to dig a fingernail into your palm or clench your fists at the same time.

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Thought-stopping takes time, repetition and effort. It may not work very well the first few times. And there may be setbacks. There will be times when thoughts of the person you loved will come back with great strength. Progress may not be smooth. How quickly it works depends on how long you loved that person and how much. And how often you practice the technique. Every time you think of that person you should do thought-stopping. And you should set aside some ten minutes every day for practice. Again, let me emphasize the importance of marking down, on a card, how many times you think of the person you want to stop loving. Continue to keep a record until you are down to four times a day. Aaron, the nineteen-year-old whose list you read, found that he was thinking of the person he wanted to fall out of love with nearly fifty times a day. After practicing thought-stopping for two weeks, he was only thinking of her two or three times a day, leaving his mind free for new interests and new people. One very beautiful fifty-year-old woman, who'd been left by a man ten years younger, by her own count was thinking of her absent lover over a hundred times a day. She used the device of a rubber band around her wrist (after two days of shouting "STOP" out loud) and she found that in just over a week she was only thinking of him four times a day. It may take you as little as a week to reach that point. It may stretch out for as long as a month. But you will find that you have at your fingertips the first, most powerful technique for falling out of love. Exercises

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Practice is essential. It helps make thought-stopping easy, and you need to have the technique at your fingertips, to use at will. 1. Ten times a day. a. Bring on (on purpose) a thought or image of your lover. b. The split second it begins to enter your mind, wipe it out by shouting, pounding, stamping your feet, digging a fingernail into your palm, snapping a rubber band that is wrapped around your wrist, and so on. c. Then replace it with a positive, pleasurable image from your list. This image should not in any way be associated with your former lover. 2. If the thought of your lover returns, drive it out again and replace it. This may require several repetitions before the thought will stay out for a period of rime. You may need to drive it out as many as ten times. 3. Whenever, throughout the day, a thought or an image of your lover appears in your mind, wipe it out at the first split second by shouting, stamping your feet, digging a fingernail into your palm, snapping a rubber band that is around your wrist. Do not let that thought develop. Replace that thought with a positive, pleasurable thought that does not involve that person. Silent Ridicule Take a good look at yourself. And laugh. And take a good long look at the person you'd like to fall out of love with. And laugh again. I'm not joking, or being flip. Being able to laugh at yourself and your predicament is the single most important indicator of a healthy, positive outlook. No doubt the world would be intolerable if we were all healthy,

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positive people. On the other hand, there's certainly no danger of too much laughter. Laughter, or humor, is the best of all possible medicines for feeling depressed. It can give you the perspective and breathing room you need. The difficulty is that when you are feeling depressed, you don't laugh, particularly at yourself, your situation or at the person you love. What this chapter will do, then, is help you unlearn the pain you feel in response to that person by teaching you how to learn a little humor in a systematic way. Thought-stopping helps you to think less about someone. Silent ridicule is a new technique that uses humor to help you think of him or her differently. What, for example, if you have to see that person? What if you have to see him or her daily at work? Or what if you live in a small town or have the same friends and your paths cross inadvertently? And what if your friends talk about that person, or you have to discuss the kids on the phone, talk about their school or their clothes and arrange for who will see the children on weekends and on vacation? And what if a child is a constant reminder of the other person because she looks or acts or talks so much like her father? Thought-stopping will reduce the number of times you think of someone, but it won't make the reality of someone's presence go away. And when you love someone who does not love you back, the pain that you feel when you see that person (all those old responses brought back, but wasted) is deeper than you can possibly explain. And all the will power in the world won't help very much. Silent ridicule helps change your response to the

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person you love by changing the way you see that person. Instead of seeing them as you have in the past, you imagine them in an absurd, ridiculous, humorous scene. You face something of a decision here. Thought-stopping is the first step. It helps reduce the pain. The question now is do you want to move further away from being in love with that person? Do you want to change the way you think and feel about that person? Because ultimately, whether it is the result of the passage of more time or your own purposeful action, falling out of love means thinking about that person, not only less often, but also in a different way. Apart from the possibility of seeing, talking to, or hearing that person, there's another reason you might wish to change the way you think about him or her, and that's the pedestal. We all do it to some degree. We all tend to put a person up on a pedestal when we are in love. And from that angle, with the light shining in your eyes, it can be a little difficult to see the flaws. We make our lovers larger and more perfect than life. Petty but nasty habits like strewing dirty socks can be seen as endearing foibles ("He needs a little mothering"). Part of loving is exactly that, overlooking, ignoring, or forgiving small-scale irritants. However, you want to fall out of love. And it may be that that pedestal lifts that person right into the pure blue sky. Silent ridicule, as you will see, knocks the pedestal out from under their feet Malcolm, fortyseven-year-old advertising media buyer. Malcolm had lived with a woman for three years. She was, he said, a wonderful antidote to his tedious life at work. They planned imaginary trips together, mountain cabins they would build, farms they would farm. One day she left with no more than a short note saying that she was bored with him and leaving. Malcolm was devastated. He stayed home for a week, unable to work. He refused to believe she had really gone. He kept her

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clothes and her desk just as she had left them, even to the point of a book lying open at the page she had been reading. We did thoughtstopping, but it was very difficult to get Malcolm to do silent ridicule. She was perfect as a person and the perfect person for him. She had a natural grace and dignity, he said, that made it impossible to imagine her as comic or absurd. And he did not want to think of her that way. After some discussion, I suggested that he should try thinking of her as a saint ... a real plaster of paris madonna with pink and blue robes and a little shining halo around her head. He had to laugh. Follow-up: Malcolm no longer keeps his museum to their past life. He changed jobs, and apartments. It was still some months before he formed another relationship. Silent ridicule, imagining your former love in an absurd or comic context so that you can laugh at them and see their flaws, is as easy to do as thought-stopping. Suppose you want to fall out of love with your exhusband When you see him or talk to him or find that you are putting him on a pedestal, instantly imagine him in a ludicrous scene. That short-circuits your usual responses. Unlike thought-stopping, it's not as easy to create appropriate situations. You may be willing to throw out the old photographs and letters and take his clothes down to the Salvation Army (which, by the way, is a good step toward no longer reinforcing your old responses to someone by getting rid of the old reminders of the past you shared). But the chances are you are somewhat reluctant to change your mind's pictures of him, even if you do suspect he enjoys rather special lighting effects in the theater of your mind. So the discovery of the right scene for the one you want to fall out of love with is usually preceded by a difficult search. It is important to find the right scene, because once you do, it can work almost instantly. One striking example of silent ridicule's power to change longing and

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depression to objectivity was shown by a gifted student whose schoolgirl crush had developed into an obsession. Marion, seventeen-year-old high-school senior. Marion was one of the brightest persons in her school. She had been virtually assured of acceptance into Harvard or Yale. Her English teacher was a young, handsome man who was an imaginative, enthusiastic teacher. Marion, who was not socially or sexually naive, became infatuated with him. It may be that he encouraged the infatuation. In any case, when Marion came to me she was missing assignments, and she had become so involved in sexual fantasies in his classroom that she was unable to remember the content of his class. As she told me: "He has the most sensual mouth. I like to imagine tracing the outline of his lips with my tongue, drawing his lower lip into my mouth and sucking on it until if s a little tender or even sore, then drawing his wet mouth down to the nipple of my breast.. ■* Marion said she simply felt helpless in the force of what she felt for him. And that she was feeling deeply depressed about herself and her feelings. Changing teachers was one obvious, but awkward, solution particularly since it was a small high school and she saw him repeatedly every day. So while thought-stopping was a necessary, important first step, silent ridicule was even more important In discussing Marion's teacher with her, we established that he was shorter than average height, an immaculate dresser, and vain about his appearance. After much discussion, I asked Marion to picture two things. First, her teacher wearing a homburg several sizes too large. And second, being

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hit in the face with a banana cream pie. She practiced the image at home and whenever she saw him. Follow-up: Marion, now a sophomore in college, says that shell always remain curious about him sexually, but that the too-big hat and pie in the face reduced him to the proper, realistic proportion and importance in her life. The one problem she'd had was giggling in the middle of class. I know it can be hard to imagine the person you love in a silly situation. Therefore, as a therapist, I usually take an active role in helping people find an absurd situation or activity for the one they want to forget You might find that a friend who knows the person you love can be particularly helpful since your friend's view of that person is apt to be more objective than yours. In addition, I'll give you some specific guidelines for designing an absurd scene that involves your former love. One important point is to be sure your scene is based on a foible or flaw or on an exaggeration of personality. You don't want your scene to evoke pity or the .feeling that you ought to rescue them. If you feel that, don't struggle to suppress it; forget the scene and try another one. What you are after is a good laugh, not more sympathy for that person. First, scan his or her environment. Where would they look most absurd? Where are they most anxious to make a good impression? Jan, twenty-eight-year-old corporate secretary. Jan was in love with her boss, a member of the board of a large corporation. She found it both funny and helpful to picture him wearing diapers to a board meeting. Henry, fifty-two-year-old actor. Henry was in love with a brilliant, totally captivating, mesmerizing art critic for a large metropolitan newspaper. He pictured her picking her nose at a gathering of people she most wanted to impress.

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Randolph, thirty-four-year-old taxi driver. Randolph had lived for two years with someone he believed to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. When she returned to her wealthy husband, Randolph pictured her eating in a restaurant with her hair in curlers and wearing a housecoat and sneakers. Franklin, forty-nine-year-old psychiatrist. Franklin had an affair with another psychiatrist, which she suddenly ended. She was always insisting on explanations for the subtlest shades of feeling. She was also very proper, wore gloves and a hat Franklin pictured her standing on her head. Next, microscopically examine that person for flaws. Exaggerate the flaw and/or use it out of context Is that person vain, shy, aggressive, submissive, overly frank, slightly deceitful, sloppy, a fuss-budget, careless, overcautious, too thin, overweight, a health freak, conceited, self-deprecating? Does he pick his nose, teeth or toes? Does she . . . well, the list of possible human frailties is endless and often grubby. But it does help to fix on one, exaggerate it and imagine it in an absurd context Pat, sixty-two-year-old suburban housewife. Pat was in love with the minister of her church. He was an eloquent speaker, particularly on subjects such as humility, grace and simplicity. He was, however, mightily dissatisfied with the house he was given by the church and said so in many ways. Pat imagined him living in. a vast marble mansion, and complaining about it A little lunacy of the imagination helps too. Cathy, forty-seven-year-old restaurant manager. She had been strung along for years by a local real-estate agent She imagined him at a formal dinner party for all the local bigwigs. They were all elegantly

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dressed. He showed up wearing a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume with red velvet shorts, a lace collar, and holding a balloon. She liked to picture him in that outfit, dancing with the head of the school board, a large, somber woman in her seventies. The scene doesn't have to be wildly exaggerated. Sometimes just a slight emphasis is all that's needed. Ernestine, twenty-five years old. She was co-owner and manager of a restaurant with her husband. When he left her to live with another woman, they still saw each other for hours every day at the restaurant. He was the maitre d' and Ernestine pictured him paying elaborate attention to a pretty woman at lunch so that the rest of the staff was snickering at him and the customers became impatient at the delay. Sometimes it can be a very simple thing. Karl, thirty-year-old policeman. He was married and in love with his best friend's wife. The two couples spent weekends and holidays together, and saw each other at least one evening a week. Karl was secretly in love with her but did not want to break up his marriage and lose his best friend. Her smile, he said, made him afraid he was going to make a fool of himself and spoil everything, so he pictured her with no teeth. Silent ridicule is particularly useful in snatching the power from domineering authority figures. Trish, twenty-two-year-old graduate student. Her father was one of the country's leading gynecologists, and was never pleased with anything his daughter did. She imagined him urinating in front of his patients in the waiting room.

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Andrew, thirty-nine-year-old civil servant. Andrew was in love with his acting teacher, a large, powerful man, with a very strong personality. He told Andrew what to wear, where to be seen, what books to read, whom to admire, whom to disdain. Andrew pictured him acting the part of a detective in a staid Broadway play in the nude with a blue ribbon tied around his penis. Once you do silent ridicule you may find it easier to laugh at yourself. And it's useful and sometimes hilarious to picture the person talking to you on the phone with Donald Duck's head or sucking on a baby bottle. It makes for a mad world, ducks' heads and baby bottles, but if s a fine way to stay sane. Humor chases anxiety the way dolphins bully sharks. Exercises 1. Design a scene in which the person you love looks, acts and/or talks absurdly. 2. Practice alone, evoking the scene three to five times a day. 3. Then, whenever you see, talk to, or hear of that person, or start putting them on a pedestal, bring on the scene. Positive Image Building and Congratulations Being in love is the best known medicine for all kinds of negative feelings. People in love often get over fears and anxieties. Unfortunately, being in love and not being loved back has just the opposite effect If you are in love, your existence, self-image and self-worth are defined by the person you love. However, being rejected may cause you to reject your existence and self-worth ... to see those values as almost without value. Their rejection makes you depressed because depression can be caused by a lack of positive reinforcement (rewards in the

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form of praise, smiles, .and encouragement, to use some of the more common terms). The feeling that you are rejected and not desired also takes away your energy. Things seem difficult, unmanageable and it simply becomes hard to cope. Then too, criticism from the one you love is particularly wounding. Criticism can make you doubt your own value and selfdefinition. ("Who are you, anyway?") And criticism can be manipulative. The person who criticizes assumes authority and power. All too often we are too quick to grant our critics authority, particularly when we love them. So being in love with someone and not being loved back, being rejected, and being criticized all change the way you see yourself in specific, hurtful ways. The question, then, is how do you repair and improve that damaged picture of yourself? It's an important question. The picture you have of yourself, however plain or fabulous, influences the way you treat yourself, the way you'treat other people, and the way other people treat you. If you could take out that self-image, if it were possible to combine into one single photograph the kaleidoscope of mental snapshots, movies, portraits and scenes that make up your self-image, it might surprise you. If you could carefully and objectively examine your image of yourself, you might be surprised at how negative it is. Most people's self-image goes way beyond the bounds of modesty and gets perilously close to self-contempt. Most people just don't see themselves in a very good light. Perhaps it's just human nature to focus on negatives. Perhaps it's because a large part of your self-image comes from other people: Mends, parents, teachers, lovers, bosses, coworkers, whose criticism can be destructive of your self-esteem. Parents berate their kids for messy rooms and untied shoes. They tell their children they are too loud or too shy. It's simply the usual way of

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bringing up children: scold, correct, and chastise. Husbands tell their wives they shouldn't do this or that And wives tell their husbands that they're fools for trying to do that or this. Perhaps ifs just easier, as Hegel said, "to discover a deficiency in individuals,' in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value." Whatever^ behind this almost universal less-than-enthusiastic self-appraisal, if s been my experience that a negative self-image—being down on yourself—makes you unhappy, gets in the way of almost anything worthwhile you want to do, and is generally unrealistic. (It also gives some people the feeling of being a fraud. This is often true of people who are seen by others as "successful.'*) In therapy, when a child has a negative self-image, I get his or her parents to give their child at least four compliments a day. And I try to get other people in the child's life (teachers, acquaintances) to do the same. But your world is not as simple as a child's. However, a child's story may serve as an illustration of an alternative to continuing depression. Do you remember The Wizard of Oz? The Tin Woodsman who had no heart, the Cowardly Lion who had no courage and the Scarecrow who had no brain? After years (maybe even centuries) of waiting around for a heart, courage and a brain, the three characters join Dorothy and go to meet the Wizard of Oz. When they start acting loving, brave and smart along the way, they find the heart, courage and brains they never knew they had. Which is the point. The way to acquire a positive self-image is to do positive things. Ifs much more efficient and rewarding to start doing active, assertive things than to spend your time looking for the reasons why you don't. The question is not "to be or not to be?" Do. The doing creates a positive feeling about yourself. It is precisely the opposite of waiting to feel positive before you do something positive. If the doing comes first, the feeling will follow.

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Do what? First, get a stack of ruled 8 by 5-inch index cards. They're available at every stationery store. Students and authors use them to keep an index of their notes. I find they're invaluable for keeping a record of progress. Of course, ifs not absolutely essential that you write down the things I ask you to. But keeping a record lends your positive actions an authenticity, authority and permanence. It makes a graphic record of your progress. The discipline helps you keep up the exercise and it's not really very much extra effort, Positives Write down, every day, at least two positive things about yourself. Positive things can be a kind of general praise, "I'm smart" or they can be as concrete as putting the cap back on the toothpaste tube, letting a senior citizen have a seat on the bus, or replacing that burned-out light bulb you've been meaning to get around to for months. They can be big or small, from the past, present or future. You don't have to feel that it is one of the best things that you've ever done, merely that you can evaluate it as positive. It could be the way you look or how you related to someone . . . how you made someone feel welcome, happy or just plain good. It can be something you did or the way you did it ("I did a good job of bolting on that tire, those bolts are really secure"). It can be something you wear ("I like the way this shirt looks on me"), or something you enjoy ("This is a game I could really get into"), or ("a terrific movie"). Assertiveness can be very useful to you now. It inhibits anxiety and tends to give you a more positive picture of yourself. As you act stronger, you see that you are stronger. Moreover, you change your environment for the better. As people see you act more assertively, they are less apt to treat you as a second-rate person and more likely to

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respect you. And, in being assertive, you stand a better chance of getting what you want. So now the point is not only to praise yourself but to encourage yourself to start moving toward positive actions that have some degree of asser-tiveness. ("I returned that faulty gizmo to the store." Expressed my opinion on the banks to Walter.") Don't give yourself a halfhearted, left-handed compliment. ("Well, I did finish it, but I had to." "It wasn't my best.") Be generous. Praise yourself. And praise yourself in writing for six weeks. Apart from feeling better about yourself, another benefit of this exercise is that you'll grow stronger and less dependent on the praise of others, because you can now praise yourself and evaluate yourself in a positive way. Here are three examples of positive cards. Forty-two-year-old executive Mon. Drove kids to school. Wore best tie. Tues. Had idea for new product; doormats with rude sayings. Saw a good movie. Wed. Ran good meeting with salespeople. Drew picture of an elephant that looks like an elephant. Thurs. Stayed home in evening and relaxed. Enjoyed reading Travis McGee mystery. Fri. Did exercises in the morning. Walked faster than usual. Sat Took Frankie to the store. Did not buy him candy. Sun. Had dinner with the kids. Read Jonathan a Pat Hutchins story. Man. Walked to train station. Had salad for

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lunch. Tues. Really love the kids. Had salad for lunch. Wed. Got up and went to work (great effort). Thought positively about my future (first time in months). Twenty-eight-year-old mother Wed. Exercise class. Did three loads of wash. Prepared address list for PTA. Thurs. Exercise class. Went to PTA meeting. Fri. Washed wall for painting. Errands. Prepared dinner. . Sun. Enjoyed dinner with Joel. Coffee with Barb. Men. Tired, but handled two sick kids. Did nothing for twenty minutes but soak in tub. Twenty-four-year-old postal worker Tues. Said "no" to Ned. Got new shoes. Wed. Cleaned bathroom. Worked out (he house thing with Bob. Thurs. Decisiveness about change. Response to Willie saying he was leaving. Fri. Pushing to get together with the Williamses . . . Took kids to movie and dinner. Sat Solved kids' fight in morning. Judy's lunch

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note. Sun. Stayed awake in church. Cooked excellent dinner. Mon. Showed new person how to do job. Helped new person. Tues. Started gardening book. Bought tomato seeds. Thought-Stopping Use thought-stopping on self-critical thinking and with depressing thoughts. There are times when self-criticism may be useful tonic. But not now. The first instant you begin to sense a self-critical thought, kill it. Shout "STOP" to yourself and cut off that destructive thought before it has a chance to take root. Replace it with one of your pleasurable scenes. Or, if s even better if you can switch to a self-assertive thought ("This is me gently but firmly refusing an offer of Danish pastry and coffee"). Switching to a self-assertive thought isn't necessary, just a bonus if you can do it. Dwelling on self-critical thoughts is not productive. Such a negative approach leads you to feel worse, less able to cope and less able to recognize your own self-worth. There are therapists who say that pain produces insight. I disagree. Tearing yourself apart is not useful. Pain* produces more pain. When you think a depressing thought, you oppress yourself. It can be very hard to break that depressing cycle. When a man in my office is in a depression, full of negative thoughts about himself, I tell him that for the next fifteen minutes I will not allow him to say anything negative about himself. And I cut him off if he does. You should do the same. Cut off self-critical thoughts the first microsecond they appear.

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Be Assertive Being assertive improves your self-image. Because assertiveness competes with anxiety. As Dr. Wolpe (a pioneer in assertive training) points out, assertive behavior lessens inhibitions in an exercise of self. In other words, acting assertively makes it possible to feel positive emotions more strongly. And the stronger you feel, the more you reduce your inhibitions and anxiety. The more you learn to control situations, the v leVs situations control you. (There are any number of books on assertive behavior; one of the best is Your Perfect Right by Robert Albert! and Michael Emmons, and When I Say No, I Feel Guilty by Manuel Smith is useful for the techniques of "fogging" and "broken record.") The focus here is on improving your self-image, so Fll simply give you a brief introduction to assertive behavior and then concentrate on how you can use assertiveness to see yourself more positively. Assertiveness is the ability and the emotional freedom to express opinions and feelings openly, with confidence and strength. Assertiveness is standing up for yourself, and not letting anybody take advantage of you. It shares some obvious qualities with aggressiveness but unlike aggressiveness, you are not out to hurt, manipulate or take advantage of anyone. One often quoted passage from the Talmud says, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" The much less quoted second half of that says, "But if I am only for myself, what am I?" Dr. Alan Goldstein, a leading behavior therapist at Temple University Medical School, describes asser-tiveness as "the ability to bring about the most beneficial result in a situation for oneself,** with the added proviso of not deliberately causing harm to others.

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Like other emotions and behaviors, assertiveness is learned. As you learn assertiveness step by step, becoming stronger and less anxious in social situations, your self-image will improve in a direct step-by-step parallel. So you begin in a small way with easy things first Ask someone you know for a small favor, or express an opinion about the weather ("I think it's warm enough"). As commonplace and as ordinary as the opinion may be, it is, for some, an essential first trial step. The point is to make it easy on yourself so that you know you will succeed. Happily, assertiveness also improves the way people think of you. Because if you are assertive, instead of timid or aggressive, if you are self-confident, instead of wishy-washy, you change your environment as people tend to respond to you more positively. People take advantage of you less and value you more. Changing your self-image means learning to think more positively about yourself. The negative images you have of yourself may be strong or weak. In either case, they won't be changed by deciding to change them. Rationality doesn't help much. You can't resolve to feel better about yourself in the morning any more than you could resolve to stop thinking about someone and thereupon magically stop or resolve to cheer up when you're blue. Changing your self-image takes exercise and practice. Again, you have to relearn on an emotional level. Because the facts don't, won't and can't change. What you can change is the emotional light in which you see yourself. I have a whole catalogue of assertiveness exercises for you to browse through. I say browse, because you may not want or need to do them all. But in looking at yourself and observing how you see yourself (weak, strong, decisive, wishy-washy, amusing, boring, intelligent, dumb, honest, crafty, important, insignificant, bold, shy, positive, negative), you may find that several of these exercises are not only useful, but necessary. For each assignment that you choose to do, make out

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an 8 by 5-inch card with the title of the assignment at the top and list the days of the week down the left-hand side so that you can record your experience and progress. Here's an example of how a card might look for the exercise I call opinions: Opinions Mon. Told Harry I liked his old suit. Talked with Sue about improving the park. Tues. Told Grant I think he has a great sense of humor. Told Peggy she's beautiful. Wed. Said Fm bored with the same tired menu to cafeteria manager. Thurs. Told Matty I think of that crook in the Senate. Told Matty he has a lovely smile. FrL Said if d be nice if we all had lunch together. Said I get bored with beautiful weather. Sat Said Matty was showing off. Said Matty should show off more frequently. Sun. I hate figs. I think a bicycle's a terrific idea, Mon. It'd be great to be a clown (to Harry). I like reading trash (to Peggy). Tues. I will always hate stewed figs. Diets are dopey; eat less (both to cafeteria manager).

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Should any exercise cause you any anxiety, tension or discomfort, don't do it You don't want to put yourself in a losing situation or cause yourself more pain. Always make sure that the positive emotion (assertiveness, confidence) wins and the anxiety loses so that you feel more positive and less anxious. If you still want to do the exercise, try it out on the cat or dog, or silently in your own mind. And then, once you can imagine it and/ or carry it out without discomfort, you can go on to try it out in a more challenging situation. On the other hand, if you feel you are already beyond an exercise, good. Skip it. What you should do is build yourself up by easy steps until you can handle much more threatening or negative situations than you could before. Assertive Assignments 1. Compliments (for three weeks or until it is easy). Accept all compliments without downgrading yourself. Example: Instead of replying, "Oh, I got it five years ago as a bargain," say, *Tm really glad you like it" Example: Instead of replying, "Anybody could have done it," say, Tm happy you noticed." Make a note of each compliment and write down your response. As a corollary, start noticing things and people in your environment that you can compliment. Giving someone a compliment is an expressive thing to do, and it helps you bring yourself out of a depressed, nonactive state. 2. Opinions (for three weeks or until it is easy). Express two opinions a day. Start with nonthreaten-ing subjects and express them to nonthreatening

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people (or even objects), gradually increasing the degree of controversy of the subjects and by degrees expressing yourself to more threatening people. Your opinions can be positive or negative, as long as they are yours. Important: You don't have to say how things make you feel, merely what you think. Example: To a friend, "I think we should have lunch with Charles." Example: To the bedroom wall, "I think it's too cold to go outside." Example: To a friend, "Frankly I thought that show was sensational." Example: To your brother, "I think it's time you burned that hairpiece." Write down the opinions you express on a card 3. / (for one week or until it is easy.) Begin five sentences a day with the word "I." Instead of saying, "It's warm in here," say, "I am warm in here." 4. Feeling Feelings (for three weeks). Eight times throughout the day, stop and check out the feeling that you have at that moment. Every time you have a feeling such as feeling glad, excited, happy, relaxed, calm, funny, grateful, confident, and so on, write it down. Begin with at least two a day. 5. Expressing Feelings (from now on). When you feel comfortable writing down feelings, express one or two feelings a day to one or two people. Begin with easy feelings with friends.

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Example: 'Tm really glad you called. It's good to hear your voice." Example: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha." Example: "I feel a little uncomfortable with all these people around.'* Work up to stronger feelings with people who are in some ways difficult to express feelings to. Example: "I feel vulnerable and exposed when you say things like that." Example: "I feel guilty and there's no reason why I should feel guilty." Example: "This suit makes me feel elegant** Example: "I want you all to know I'm very proud of this dinner." Always make it easy on yourself. Don't make yourself anxious. Don't do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Make sure assertiveness wins over anxiety. 6. Modeling (whenever you try any of the exercises 4-11 and whenever you feel you need extra confidence). Get an image in your mind of someone you think of as very self-confident. Keep that individual in mind as you try to act the way they might act Think of and use the words they would use, their tone of voice, eye contact, posture and self-confidence. 7. Say No (twice a week). If you never or rarely

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say "no," practice saying "no" at least twice a week when someone asks you to do something you don't want to do. However, if it makes you feel tense, begin by just thinking about saying "no." In either case, write down on a card all the times you think or say "no." 8. A Favor (once a week). If you are not used to asking for a favor, ask. Begin with a very small favor from someone you know well. Adventures You deserve to be treated considerately. To earn consideration you have to ask for it. And you will have to practice assertive behavior in order to learn to ask. These exercises are like the basic exercises you do when you leam to play tennis or softball. They stretch and develop new emotional muscles, reduce your anxiety and help you toward a better self-image. 9. Buy Something. And return it. For getting things your way. 10. Quiet Table. Go into a restaurant and insist, firmly but nicely, on a quiet table. (There are times, of course, when this is not practical.) Other examples might be asking the cab driver to drive more slowly or more quickly, asking the bus driver to let you know when you reach your stop, asking for special commemorative stamps at the post office. 11. Simple Fare. Go into a very fancy restaurant and order a very simple meal, "Just a salad, please" or "Just the soup, please.'VThe "beautiful people" do it all the time. It's one way some of them stay slim. 12. Teach. Teach someone to read, dance, or exercise, or how to saw a straight line. This is one of the best exercises of all. It gives you the emotional reward that comes with doing something worthwhile and

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with giving something to someone else. And, of course, there is the extra bonus of realizing that you have something worthwhile to give. 13. Learn. The world is full of things to learn. How to grow your own, how to dance, how to make something, how to fix something else, how directors make movies, how movie stars make love, what Sophocles said about knowledge, what Joan of Arc was really like. Learning is more than a distraction. It can give you a new skill, a new purpose. It can exercise and strengthen your mind. It can introduce you to a whole new realm of possibilities and people. 14. Rehearsal (then try it out). With a friend or by yourself act out the following situations: A. You are in line. Someone cuts in front of you. You ask him/her to go to the end of the line. You tell him/her to go to the end of the line. He or she goes to the end of the line. B. In a restaurant the steak is overdone. Ask the waiter, quietly but firmly, to take it back. C. At a fancy beach resort, a lifeguard tells you to leave because this is a private beach. Tell the lifeguard the law in the town says there is no such thing as a private beach. Self-indulgence Self-indulgence is a way of giving yourself positive reinforcement. Here are a few suggestions. You may well think of other, better ones. Being good to yourself isn't a luxury, it's a pleasure. And for positive reinforcement, a necessity. 15. Bed. Stay in bed an extra three minutes in the morning.

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16. Lotion. Enjoy the sensation of putting on hand lotion slowly. 17. If You Can't Think of Anything Good to Do for Yourself. Think of something good to do for a friend or just call an old friend or do something good for your house or apartment. 18. Candy (once a month). Find three superb chocolates and eat them very slowly. 19. Cats. Watch how a cat seeks pleasure in each moment. Notice how it seeks out the most comfortable spot in the room. And how it stretches. And how it climbs on you when it wants to be petted. Spend ten minutes like a cat. 20. One Day (once a month). Spend one day as if it were your only day. Just today. What" would you like to do? 21. Exercise. Of course you should. It's easiest if you go to an exercise, dance or yoga class. But you can also do sit-ups, touch your toes and jog. Lots of books are available. It makes your body stronger and your mind function better. 22. Bubble Bath. Soak. The hardest part of any of the foregoing twenty-two things to do is doing them, in themselves they are, by and large, easy enough. You may well agree that some would, or at least could, actually improve your life. If you think you could use an added push, you might ask someone you know to be an "enabler." Enabling is an idea I first heard about from a group of church women in Washington who wanted to be more active and effective in helping each other and their children. An enabler is something like a friendly schoolmaster who makes sure you do your

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lessons. Here's now it works. Tell your friend what you want to do and how you plan to do it. You then report to your enabler regularly. Your enabler both encourages you and holds you accountable for keeping to your schedule. For example, if you set out to express two opinions a day, or start five sentences a day with "I" or jog two miles a day, you report to your enabler daily what you have achieved. Having to be accountable to someone else and having the encouragement and support of another person can give you more discipline and motivation than you might have on your own. Congratulations This last suggestion is a treat, a small useful technique that behavior therapists call positive reinforcement. B. F. Skinner originated the technique with specific rewards. And Joseph Cautela designed a variation, called covert reinforcement, to include the intangible, but real rewards of silent praise and pleasures. Congratulations is a way to strengthen your progress by rewarding yourself for taking constructive steps. And it helps you recognize your ability to make a positive change. For the more you focus on a behavior, the more likely it is for that behavior to recur. In fact, any attention we give to specific behavior tends to strengthen that behavior and increase its frequency. For example, if you praise a child's one glimmer of good table manners, you are apt to see an overall improvement in the child as a dinner companion. And conversely, scolding a child for messy table habits is apt to prolong the mess. After all, we all like attention.

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Here is how you use congratulations for falling out of love. Suppose you've been thinking about telephoning your former love, or taking out a photograph of the two of you together and looking at it. And instead, you turn away from the phone or close the dresser drawer where the pictures are kept. Closing the drawer and turning away from the phone are both positive actions that, like thought-stopping, help extinguish thoughts about that person. For taking that positive step, congratulate yourself and give yourself a small reward. You want to encourage and reinforce that kind of behavior. So give yourself a record, a new paperback, take a leisurely shower or soak in a bubble bath, call a friend, take a walk in an interesting place, buy yourself a snack, or take a three-minute vacation from the world by closing your eyes and picturing peaceful, passing clouds in a blue sky. After all, you've earned a reward. The last reward is a mini-vacation. Suppose you are walking down a street and you are tempted to walk past the place where your former lover lives, "just to see if she is there." And you don't, you don't turn down that street. Or suppose you take the positive, assertive action of asking your friends not to mention the person you want to fall out of love with during the evening. In either case, or in any other case, you can reward yourself on the spot for free by simply picturing a beautiful place you'd like to be, a beach, a sports car, an ancient oak-paneled library of rare books, the fifty-yard line of the Super Bowl. These pleasurable thoughts are free and make a good reward for positive actions. If you have difficulty picturing a new pleasurable scene that does not include your former love, you might recall one of your favorites from your thought-stopping list.

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So as you notice you're thinking about your former love less, and when you take a positive step away from that person, reward yourself with congratulations. Jealousy "It's like being possessed," said one man. "I was totally controlled by it. I would seriously consider whether I should kill myself or the person I loved or my rival or all three of us." Another man said that the only other time he'd had so much pain (and fear) was during heart surgery. A woman told me, "I hate it. I hate it. I can't get rid of it." In the range of human emotions, jealousy strikes a vicious, primal claim. It destroys marriages, love affairs and friendships. Some parents feel jealous when a child is born. Cain, son of Adam in the Bible, slew his brother out of jealousy. Medea killed her own children and Othello killed his bride, Desdemona, out of jealousy. Jealousy demands immediate, total attention, blocking all other emotions and considerations. Almost everyone has suffered from it. And you know it's a parasite that feeds on love. You know it makes you selfish, possessive, anxious and repulsive—full of hate, anger and suspicion. You know it makes you an ugly pawn to its demands. And you know that just feeling the emotion is a dead-end trap that damages what you want most. You know all that. But once you start feeling jealous, there doesn't seem to be much you can do about it. After centuries of talking and writing about jealousy, the prevailing theory seems to be that the way you overcome jealousy is by an act of will. I strongly disagree. I don't think you can will jealousy away. It has to be emotionally unlearned. Jealousy is a negative emotion that keeps you from falling out of love, while at the same time it keeps you from feeling love. It keeps you

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emotionally bound to and emotionally dependent on the person you love. To fall out of love you have to break the emotional involvement that jealousy demands. As you have seen, thought-stopping and silent ridicule help you stop thinking about that person and change the way you think about them. And positive image building gives you a more positive picture of yourself. But if you are jealous, you will need more help. Why, for example, in the face of its repulsiveness and in the knowledge of its unlimited capacity for destroying a loving relationship do we allow jealousy to exist in our minds? At least part of the answer is that jealousy is irrational. For all its agility and speed in finding apparently rational reasons, excuses and subterfuges, jealousy has its roots deep in the emotions. Possibly you first learned jealousy when you were an infant in youf crib. Possibly before you could walk or talk, another person walked into the room and your mother stopped playing with you. Possibly you felt deprived of your mother's love, anxious that you might never get it back, and fearful of the power of the other person who could so easily lure your mother away from you. Possibly that person was your father. Possibly. But for whatever reason- you first learned jealousy, knowing that reason is unlikely to help. Rational explanations of former emotions can never be certain and are beside the point. To unlearn jealousy, you must unlearn on that same emotional level. Thought-stopping applied to jealousy is helpful in emotionally unlearning jealousy. (The first instant you begin to feel a jealous thought, you shout "STOF* to yourself and replace the jealous thought with a pleasurable, positive thought that does not involve the person in the jealous thought.) But usually, along with thought-stopping, I use another technique I call graduated calming. (It's based on Dr. Joseph Wolpe's

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method of calming. reducing and extinguishing anxieties, which is technically called desensitization.) As Dr. Wolpe points out in his introduction, one of the most important discoveries of behavior therapy is that an anxiety like jealousy can be reduced or extinguished if, while you are deeply relaxed, you can imagine a scene or an experience that usually causes anxiety. Because deep relaxation inhibits anxiety* For many years, jealousy was thought to be an inevitable force of nature. Traditional therapy gives one insights, but as I have suggested, the insights do not make you feel less jealous. Graduated calming, on the other hand, does make you feel less jealous. I have been teaching the technique for overcoming jealousy for almost four years and it works. The technique is best handled by a therapist because a therapist can evaluate your emotional history and, based on that, make an analysis of your behavior to determine the events and emotions for graduated calming. And, of course, a behavior therapist would guide and assist the whole graduated calming process. Still, I want to spend a little extra time giving you a working knowledge of graduated calming because I believe it can be a great help to you in dealing with jealousy even without a therapist There are no harmful side effects from graduated calming, and you might find it very helpf uL At the very least, learning graduated calming will give you a new way to relax, an objective look at your jealous feelings, and an inside view of how behavior therapy works. Graduated calming is relearning on a neurological and emotional level. It changes your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations and, most important, your anxiety levels. Graduated calming takes you slowly, step by step, up what behavior therapists call an anxiety (or any other negative emotion) hierarchy, as first described by Dr. Wolpe. In this chapter, the negative emotion that will be reduced is

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jealousy. You begin with deep muscle relaxation, imagine a situation that causes you some jealousy, and then return to deep relaxation. Learning graduated calming is a three-step process, beginning with learning deep muscle relaxation, followed by establishing your own jealousy hierarchy, followed by learning the graduated calming process. Deep Muscle Relaxation The old adage, 'lie down, and you will feel better 3 ', has more than a grain of truth in it. Relaxation combats anxiety. There is a direct relationship between the degree of muscle relaxation and the degree of positive emotional change away from anxiety. So I am going to teach you how to relax far beyond your usual degree of relaxation. With practice youll be able to relax deeply at will, and diniinish your anxiety. Before going through the complete deep muscle relaxation process, Td like to give you an idea of the principle involved. I want you right now to make a fist, and tighten all the muscles in your right arm. Make the muscles as tight and hard as you can so that your arm is as rigid as you can make it. Notice all the sensations in your arm and concentrate on the muscle tension in your biceps. Now I want you to let go gradually, relax your arm slowly, and notice how that "letting go" is an activity itself. It is the uncontracting of your muscles. Keep on letting go until your arm feels totally relaxed. I say "feels'* totally relaxed because, although most of the muscle fibers in your arm feel relaxed, some of the muscles will still be contracted. So keep on letting go. Try to continue that letting go activity beyond the point of simple relaxation and deeply relax all the muscles in your arm. Notice the feeling in your arm.

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Now clench your fist again and make your whole arm as rigid as iron. Make it as tight as you possibly can and become aware of what your arm feels like. Keep on being aware of that feeling as you begin to relax. See if you can picture the muscles in your arm as you totally relax your arm. Let your arm relax even more. If you concentrate all of your attention on your arm, you will find some few muscle fibers are still tense. It is the relaxation of those additional fibers that will bring about deep relaxation. So repeat the process of slowly tightening and relaxing your arm, being aware of the muscles in your arm and observing them as they relax, and when you feel your arm completely relaxed, see if you can go beyond that furthest point and relax still further. Try to go beyond what seems to be the furthest point. That's a fair example of deep muscle relaxation, a systematic way of driving out tension by letting your mind become aware of and relaxing each part of your body in turn by concentrating on that part of your body, feeling any muscles that might be tense and letting them go. Deep muscle relaxation requires that you become physically passive. Yet you remain an alert observer and reporter of your own body's degree of relaxation. Most people can't fully relax on their first try. Deep relaxation has to be learned, and it does take practice. So while fifteen or twenty minutes of relaxation may, at first, just relax your forearm, eventually you'll be able to relax your whole body in a minute or two. On the other hand, you might just be one of those lucky people who, on their very first attempt at deep relaxation, experience deepening and extending relaxation radiating throughout their body and feel general effects such as calmness, sleepiness or warmth. The effect that you want to

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achieve is a peaceful and calm state where you feel no tension, no anxiety, no worries, no negative emotions whatsoever. If you have access to a tape recorder, you might like to record the next section in an easy, relaxed voice. And then whenever you want to practice deep muscle relaxation listen to the tape. You'll find if s a great help because, with the tape recorder giving you instructions, your mind will be free to follow and find the muscles that need relaxing. Find a comfortable, quiet place where you know you won't be disturbed. Now make yourself comfortable by lying down or stretching out on a sofa or sitting back in an easy chair. Then, with your arms at your sides and your legs straight out with your feet slightly apart, relax. Erase the thoughts of the things that happened today. Make your mind a perfect blank. Let go of all your worries and hopes and fears . . . feel your mind just float free in space. Now be aware of your left leg. Picture the muscles and bones in your left leg. Lift your left leg six inches off the floor and tighten all the muscles in your left leg . . . tighter and tighter until it is rigid. Now all at once, let go of all the muscles in your left leg and let it drop. Roll it slowly from side to side a couple of times to be sure all the muscles are completely relaxed. Just let it lie there, totally relaxed. Now bring your mind's awareness to your right leg. Picture the muscles and bones inside. Lift the leg six inches off the floor, tighten all your right leg muscles until they are rigid, keep your leg rigid for a couple of moments, then drop it, roll it from side to side, completely relaxed, and forget it. Now bring your mind to your left arm. Concen-

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trate on the muscles and bones in your left arm. Lift it six inches in the air and tighten all the muscles as hard as you can. Tighten harder. Then let the arm drop. Roll it from side to side a couple of times to make sure it is completely relaxed, and then forget it Now bring your mind to your right arm. Concentrate on the muscles and bones of your right arm. lift it six inches and tighten all the muscles as hard as you can. Tighten harder. Then let the arm drop. Roll it from side to side a couple of times to make sure your right arm is completely relaxed, and then forget it. Now tighten your buttocks. Squeeze as hard as you can, hold it, tighter, now let go and relax. Inhale so that your stomach pushes out as far as it will go. Squeeze in another breath so that it expands out further. Hold it. Now exhale ... let it go all at once and forget it Relax. Bring your awareness to your chest and shoulders. Lift your shoulders up and with your arms completely relaxed, tighten your shoulder and chest muscles as if you were trying to touch your shoulders in front of you. Tighter. Now let your shoulders drop. Relax, Now picture all the muscles in your neck and tighten them. Tighten them so hard the cords in your neck stand out. Tighter. Let go all at once. Relax. Roll your head gently from side to side to be sure all the neck muscles are relaxed. Now squeeze your face muscles as if you were trying to bring all of the features of your face to one point around your nose. Make your face as tight and pursed as if it were becoming a prune. Now let go. Take a deep breath and hold it. Open your eyes and your mouth as wide as you can. Stick your tongue out as far as it will go. Open your eyes and your mouth wider so you can feel your face stretch. Stick out

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your tongue farther. Now all at once, let out your breath and relax your face. Relax. Your body should be completely relaxed. Let your mind cruise down to your left and your right legs, your left arm and your right arm, your stomach, buttocks, shoulders, chest, neck, and face in turn to be sure that all the muscles in your body are peaceful and relaxed. Search out any tension that may still remain in any muscle, and let go of that muscle. Let it relax still further. Allow yourself enough time to go slowly over your body, and ease any tension that may still remain. You might feel drowsy or warm or a kind of pleasant tingling. Feel how good it feels to be calm and relaxed. You can become twice as relaxed as you are merely by taking in a really deep breath and slowly exhaling. With your eyes closed (so that you become less aware of objects and movements around you and can thus prevent any surface tensions from developing), breathe in deeply and feel yourself becoming heavier. Take in a long, deep breath and let it out very slowly. Feel how heavy and relaxed you have become. Some people find they can deepen their relaxation further by mentally reviewing the parts of their bodies and saying to themselves, "My foot [or calf or thigh or whatever] is limp and warm and heavy." This should be done slowly, repeating each statement once or twice so your body has time to respond to your instructions. In a state of perfect relaxation you should feel unwilling to move a single muscle in your body. Think about the effort that would be required to raise your right arm. As you think about raising your right arm, see if you can notice any tensions that might have crept into your shoulder and your arm.

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Now you decide not to lift the arm but to continue relaxing. Observe the relief and the disappearance of the tension. Just carry on relaxing like that. When you wish to get up, count backward from four to one. You should then feel fine and refreshed, wide awake and calm. So that is deep muscle relaxation. Practice deep muscle relaxation twice a day (in bed at night before going to sleep is a good time, because it will also help you get to sleep) until you can .do it easily. After you've thoroughly mastered the technique, you won't need to do the tensing exercises I've described. Jealousy Hierarchy As you are acquiring a facility for deep muscle relaxation, you should also take some extra time out from your day to list the things that make you feel jealous. After you list them, you can rate them according to the amount of jealousy each one of those things (people, places or situations) makes you feel. A jealousy hierarchy is simply a list, in ascending order of intensity, of the things that make you jealous, on a scale of zero to one hundred. Zero would be total calm and relaxation as in deep muscle relaxation. And one hundred would be the most jealousy you could possibly feel. Quite apart from graduated calming, having a specific list of your own jealousies in order of intensity has two other benefits. First, quantifying jealousy helps reduce it. The fact that a jealous thought is brought out into the open and put into an order helps to bring order to the chaos of your anxiety. And, second, it is more meaningful to be able to say to yourself (or to your therapist), "I feel at sixty," as opposed to the usual vague description, "I feel awful."

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Here's what the scale means in terms of what you feel. 0 Total relaxation. No jealousy. No negative thoughts whatsoever. 10, 20 Mild, jealous feeling . . . barely noticeable. 30, 40, 50 Moderate jealousy. Definitely feeling uneasy. You might feel butterflies in your stomach or the start of a tension headache. 60, 70 High jealousy. You can feel your heart pounding, head/stomach ache. Real distress. 80, 90 Intense, severe jealousy approaching rage or panic. Something you want to avoid at all costs. 100 Panic. The most jealousy you can possibly imagine. Most people find that a pleasant, relaxing scene that does not involve their former love is useful in achieving zero on the relaxation scale and in returning back to zero when a thought causes them to feel some jealousy. However, it doesn't have to be a "scene" at all. It could be as simple as picturing clouds in the sky, or the ocean. Just as long as it is peaceful and bland. Getting down to zero is a problem if your usual state of mind is at the near frenzy of seventy or eighty on the scale. One man who habitually felt extremely tense and anxious (he was living at seventy, we later decided) got down to zero in his first session.

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But that is exceptional. You may find that deep relaxation takes much more practice and time before you can get down to a completely, relaxed state of mind and body. A warm bath, music or reading a dull book beforehand can be helpful. Making your mind a complete blank, practicing driving out all thoughts beforehand, is another useful exercise. Next, the thoughts or situations in your own hierarchy don't require a vivid imagination, even though you may be blessed with one. What you will need is to be a good reporter of your own reactions* Whenever you feel jealous, you should take note of what it is that makes you feel jealous and you should write that down. You should also assign it a number on your hierarchy scale according to the amount of jealousy it inspires (for example, "She's talking to him about her vacation—forty"). Finally, make a separate check on yourself throughout the day to see where you are on the scale so that you learn to recognize and rate your feelings. This not only helps to fill out your hierarchy list, but helps you learn to recognize and objectify your negative feelings. As in the making of your thought-stopping list, there is no such thing as a "good" list or a "bad" one, an "average" list or an "abnormal" list. We are all so different that the thought of a former lover talking to a good friend may leave some of us at zero and others at one hundred. So while it's difficult for me to guess what you should put at the top or the bottom of your jealousy hierarchy, you may find some examples helpful. Melissa, forty-four years old, married twenty-three years to a stockbroker. She'd had, what seemed to many of her friends, a wonderful marriage. Four happy, healthy, intelligent kids, and a big, warm,

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beautiful home. Both she and her husband were dynamic, bright, sensitive people. Then her husband announced that he was in love with a younger woman, a lawyer whom he'd met at his office. He said he was leaving Melissa. Melissa had built her whole life around him. It seemed incredible to her, totally unfair, that he could just walk out. Perhaps, she felt, he had never really been in love with her. Perhaps their life together had been a lie. But she clung to her old model of a happy marriage she had worked so hard to achieve. And, not surprisingly, she felt intensely jealous over his new partner. Particularly galling were his hints of newfound sexual pleasure and intimacy. Why had she been denied that? What had she done wrong, or not known? Her suffering was intense and aggravated by living in a small community in the Midwest where "everyone knew." We did thought-stopping, which greatly diminished the number of times she thought about her husband. But her image of herself on a high summer noon, swimming nude in the surf of the Big Sur, was not enough to stop her intense feelings of jealousy. I taught Melissa deep muscle relaxation and together we made the following jealousy hierarchy. Melissa's Jealousy Hierarchy 0 Seeing and hearing the wave-lap of the sea on the pilings of a wharf in a fishing village. 20 Her rival's friendship with her own children. 35 Her rival relating to and being liked by her husband's parents. 50 Seeing them together.

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65 Seeing them happy together. 70 Imagining them talking about her. 80 Their experimenting and enjoying each other sexually. 100 Losing her husband to her rival forever. Graduated calming did not effect a magic cure for Melissa. In her own eyes and in the eyes of her friends, she had suffered both a defeat and an emotional loss. All the habits, all the responses, all the feelings of twenty-three years of her life were suddenly useless or called into question or, from her point of view, pointless. On the other hand, she became alert to her own brand-new possibilities. Thought-stopping radically decreased the time she spent thinking about her husband. Silent ridicule, picturing him with a bowl of oatmeal overturned on his hea